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Bob Hope Down Under: "Put Another Shrimp on the Barbie, Mate!"

Bob Hope Down Under: "Put Another Shrimp on the Barbie, Mate!"

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Home Page > Arts & Entertainment > Television > Bob Hope Down Under: "Put Another Shrimp on the Barbie, Mate!"

Bob Hope Down Under: "Put Another Shrimp on the Barbie, Mate!"

Posted: Mar 04, 2011 | Comments: 0
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(Ed. note: The author was a script-writer for Bob Hope between 1977 and 1992nd

In 1978, Bob Hope decided to take his television show Down Under – to Australia and New Zealand. Our critically acclaimed tour included stops in Which Auckland, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth would prove to be a major turning point for the Bob Hope Show, Which suddenly acquired wings and, for the next 15 years, could turn up at just about any spot on the globe.

Our flight from Los Angeles to Perth would take twenty-three hours, and on board our Qantas 747 were guest stars Barbara Eden, Florence Henderson and Charo as well as twenty Hope staffers that included Les Brown's musical arranger, Bob Alberti, makeup is Don Marando and Hope's longtime cue CardWizard, Barney McNulty.

Eighteen hours after lifting off at LAX, we touched down in Sydney for a two-hour refueling stop before completing the five-hour hop to Perth. The Aussies' welcome was as warm as the water of the half-mile wide Swan River that flows through the pristine city's center. Were "I Dream of Jeannie" and "The Brady Bunch" still runs in their first on Australian TV, so from the moment they stepped off the plane, Barbara and Florence were stalked by screaming, autograph-seeking fans.

Armed with one of the longest monologues he'd ever deliver, and Aussie fans cheering wildly with 8.300, Hope strode on stage dressed in a crisp, beige linen suit.

* "I can not tell you how happy I am to be here in Perth, the most isolated city on earth Now I know why you did not send a man to the moon -.'re On it.

* Perth is strategically located – between nowhere and nothing.

* It's such a long flight from Los Angeles, by the time we got here, I was starting to look like my passport picture.

* I love to fly, but I have a terrible fear of being hijacked to a country where they never heard of me.

That line was strangely prophetic. A little over a year later, along with his wife, Dolores, gig and me, would carry his own luggage Hope from a China Airlines 707 that had just touched down at the Beijing Airport. Thanks to a welcoming committee that had been delayed, one of the most recognizable faces in the world would belong to just another visiting American.

* And Perth has to be the friendliest city in the world. Yesterday, I saw two lobsters propositioning a kangaroo.

Perched on the far western edge of Australia's vast outback, the city is a demarcation point between that dusty red desert and the Indian Ocean and supports indigenous wildlife enough to keep Crocodile Dundee in business indefinitely.

* And you have such clean air here. My lungs are not used to it. This morning, they got up two hours before I did.

* The water here is so clear, I hear the shark from Jaws has to swim all the way to New Guinea just to change his shorts. Is that right?

* And there's no air or water pollution in Perth. Where have you gone wrong?

* I can not tell you how happy I am to be standing here on the stage of the biggest theater in the world, with eighty-three-hundred seats. The last twelve rows are in Indonesia.

Though maybe not as far away as Jakarta, the uppermost rows were a good 300 feet from the stage Which meant that, for our sketches to be seen and understood by the entire audience, we'd have to use simple sets and props readily identifiable.

* These audiences are great, but Australians drink so much beer, you're talking to more people in the aisles than in the seats.

* No, I love the beer here. One sip and you do not feel old anymore. Two sips and you do not feel anything anymore.

These were not exaggerations. Down under, beer is the oil of industry. Our rooms at the posh hotel Perth were equipped with small refrigerators # in which appeared two complimentary daily quarts of Swan camp, an Aussie favorite. Like clockwork, at around nine, in a jaunty would pop a bottle and grave bellman who'd ask, "Can I uncork one for you, mate?" To decline would have been ungracious toward our hosts. Would not it?

* I've never seen so many beautiful girls. Perth was not only the city first saw the astronauts from space – it was the first one they looked for.

* And the beaches here are safe Sun The lifeguards give every girl mouth-to-mouth resuscitation – Whether she needs it or not.

Aside from its gorgeous women, Australia boast the best-trained lifeguards in the world. While shooting segments for the show on the beach, crack teams of them could be seen drilling nearby, racing through the surf in Longboat. Matching the Aussies' love of the water is a great respect for its power.

Of course, Hope was not about to spend two weeks in a foreign country without his sticks.

* I love your golf courses. Yesterday, I had a great caddy. He was carrying my clubs in a pouch.

* On the third hole, my ball was okay, but my caddy took a bad hop.

* But it worked out great. He could run faster than I could hit.

Following the monologue, we set the stage for our obligatory customs sketch – always a surefire in foreign country – featuring Hope, Barbara Eden and Florence Henderson as themselves Confronted by an ultra-suspicious customs officer (Charo).

(Up on busy airport lobby) ANNOUNCER: "Will the Bob Hope party please report to Customs.")

(Hope enters dressed in an Australian safari outfit: bush jacket, shorts, long stockings and a hat with the brim turned up on one side as is the Australian custom)

HOPE: Well, mates, billy me bloke, let's go pick up a cobber jackeroo and a boomerang and catch us a dink, huh!

FLORENCE: Bob, what are you saying?

HOPE: I do not know, but five stewardesses thought it was hilarious. (Bangs on table) How about some service here!

BARBARA: Oh, look, he's doing his David Niven impression.

HOPE: Now let me do the talking. I know how to handle these Australian accents. (Calls out) What say in there, Cobb? How about some service!

(Charo enters dressed as a customs officer:. Short shorts, white blouse with the buttons unfastened She looks gorgeous)

CHARO: What's going on out here? (To Hope) What are you, a hooligan? I am Inspector Charo. I want to inspect your bags, look in your socks, feel in your shoes, open your shirt …

HOPE: Keep going. I may stay at the airport.

CHARO: I must fill out this form please indicate the province, state, kingdom, territory, or protectorate principality From Which the applicant originally immigrated. (Deep breath)

HOPE: Could you read that again?

CHARO: What's the matter, you do not understand my inflections?

BARBARA: That's just the problem. He can not take his eyes off of them.

HOPE: I was born in England.

CHARO: Now I must examine your passport.

HOPE: Here you are. (Hands it to her)

CHARO: (looks at it) Wow! It's not every day you see something signed by Queen Victoria!

HOPE: Is not that incredible? She was dead forty years at the time.

CHARO: (looking at it) This is a very good likeness.

BARBARA: It should be. It's by Michelangelo.

HOPE: Would not you help a starving art student who needed the work?

CHARO: I must examine your luggage. Please place your suitcase on the table here.

(Hope tries to lift the bag and it does not budge. He tries two hands with no success.)

HOPE: Some wise guy nailed it to the floor!

FLORENCE: Bob stood aside. (She places the suitcase easily on the table)

HOPE: Sure, it's easy when you've been on all those vacations with the Brady Bunch.

CHARO: (opens bag, removes jar): What's this?

HOPE: wrinkle cream.

CHARO: (with tube): And this?

HOPE: My mascara.

CHARO: (with bottle): This?

HOPE: Grecian Formula.

FLORENCE: (to Charo): Keep going. There's more of him in there than there is out here!

HOPE: How would you like to be ambushed by my "Waterpik?"

The items removed from Hope's bag were small, but they were quickly identified would be instantly So They understood by the entire audience. Otherwise, to get laughs, the objects had to be large enough to be seen by everyone, like these:

CHARO: (removes an orange life-preserver) This?

HOPE: Do not pull that string! (She does and it inflates On the back is printed:. HELP!)

BARBARA: He's been carrying that with him ever since he saw Jaws.

CHARO: (removes a bra with three cups size EEE)

HOPE: (to audience) I'm warning you guys. Never date anyone in the cast of Star Wars!

The sketch Concluded with Charo discovering a hidden live in Hope's steamer trunk girl whom he explains is his tennis instructor. As they stroll off together, she'd better accompany them Charo Decides "to make sure there's no 'coochie coochie'."

Next, we took the special out-of-doors, put in a rowboat Hope and Florence on the Swan River and provided them with some comedy dialogue to go along with their duet of "Cruisin 'Down the River."

For numbers like this, the music is pre-recorded So the performers can lip-synch the lyrics. The dialogue was on cue cards held aloft on the shore by Barney and his assistants. The problem was that neither Florence nor Hope, both nearsighted, could make them out. Barney tried larger lettering. Still no luck. In desperation, he decided to hold the cards above his head while walking in chest-high water just out of camera range and ahead of the rope pulling the boat just below the waterline. He took three or four steps quickly and promptly submerged more than Humphrey Bogart in "The African Queen."

The following day, Perth's morning paper featured huge, front-page photos of one of Hollywood's most experienced cue-card men going down for the third time, his cards floating aimlessly like rectangular lily pads toward the Indian Ocean. It was an incident the affable Irishman – whose sister, by the way, played Blondie in the movies under her stage name Penny Singleton – would never be allowed to forget. At least not as long as Hope was around to remind him.

The two men had a close relationship that went back thirty years. Barney had started as a teenage page at CBS in New York. One day during a rehearsal of the Ed Wynn Show, Ed came over to him and said, "I'm having trouble remembering my lines. Could you run over to Woolworth's and buy me some cards to print them on?" (This was a common complaint of radio veterans transplanted to television where they had no scripts to read.) Barney ran across Times Square, picked up some Bristol board, india ink and broad-tipped pens and ran back to the studio and into a career he'd spend the rest of his life Pursuing.

Barney had been with Hope since World War II, and over the years, the service he named "Ad Libs," handled cue cards for scores of variety shows, sitcoms and dramas, including Murder, She Wrote, M * A * S * H , Cheers, NYPD Blue, The Rockford Files, and Hart to Hart. He worked in movies, too, including It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Baby
Old Men films with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Barney became such a fixture on the Back Lots of Hollywood, he was welcomed through the front gate at every studio with a wave and a smile.

Before reaching the land down under, Hope made a quick pit stop in the land under the land down under – New Zealand. His first monologue of the tour would be delivered to a crowd of 2.000 Aucklanders.

* I'm happy to be in New Zealand has more sheep than I hear people. I believe it. When I got off the plane, all I heard was one, loud "baaaaaa."

* I've never seen so many sheep. I feel like I'm visiting next year's Christmas sweater.

* This is the time of year all the sheep are fleeced. Back home, we'll call it "April 15th."

* New Zealand is the land of the kiwi, a bird that does not fly and lays an egg bigger than itself. I feel a certain closeness to the Kiwi bird. I can not fly either, and I often lay an egg bigger than myself.

In the weeks before we arrived, a five-year-old-girl from Melbourne that the press had nicknamed "Mouse" had been getting lots of play on Aussie radio singing a song called "Tell Me a Story." A disc jockey friend of Hope's in Sydney suggested she would be a cute addition to our show.

Hope agreed, although he was concerned that a child that age might be overwhelmed by the size of the audience. We were assured that she'd been interviewed on the radio numerous times since her novelty record had hit big and had shown no signs of stage fright. Of course, we were making a TV program, but show business is show business, right?

Sun Mouse was booked. She would chat with Hope for a few minutes and then sing "Tell Me a Story." She knew the ditty by heart, but since her reading ability was limited, Barney and his cue cards would not be of much help – besides, he did not know how to print like a five-year old. But Hope had always had a nice rapport with kids whenever we used them as extras on our specials, so it did not occur to anyone that he might have a problem with this one.

The little girl was brought to rehearsal by her parents, Hope and gently asked her a few questions that she responded to without appearing at all nervous or fearful. That was at rehearsal with no audience. When she was on the show and entered Introduced to music by Bob Alberti and the boys, she still appeared self-confident. Then she looked up and saw the
Entertainment Centre crowd and suddenly went mute.

She took another look and started to sob. Gently, Hope began reassuring – "Do you know how pretty you are?" These people would love to hear you sing. "-?" You would not want to disappoint them, would you "The Mouse-tears continued, but wasn Hope 't about to let a five year-old get the better of him. If Art Linkletter could do it, so could he.

"You know, you're so pretty, and I have an opening in my act for a girl singer. Would you like to go on the road with me?" Mouse stopped mid-sob, looked at Hope and said, "What's the
? money "Hope was laughing so hard he almost could not introduce her Which song went like this:

MOUSE: Tell me a story, tell me a story
Tell me a story, and then I'll go to bed.
You know you promised,
You said you would,
You said you would if I'd be good,
Tell me a story and then I'll go to bed.

Musical numbers by Barbara, as well as Florence and Charo performances by several Australian pop chart favorites (including a singer from India named Jamal) completed a bill of a show that set a high standard for the foreign Hope specials would produce throughout the eighties, topping a list that would be highlighted by a three-hour tour de force taped in the People's Republic of China just sixteen months later.

The Laugh Makers: A Behind-the-Scenes Tribute to Bob Hope's gag Incredible Writers was published by Bear Manor Media and was named one of Leonard Maltin's "Top 20 Year-End Picks." To order: http://bobhopeslaughmakers.weebly.com

Kindle e-book .99: www.amazon.com/dp/B0041D9EPO

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